The long ride home

Nabel Mohammed Saleh, Director of Roads, Roads and Traffic Agency (RTA) gives
Munawar Shariff a clear picture of how the RTA is handling the issue of constructing
new roads, reducing traffic and building the infrastructure for Dubai’s future growth

Munawar Shariff: By how much are you expanding your roads? What is the capacity of vehicles you are targeting to absorb on all the new road constructions?

Nabeel Mohammed Saleh: To provide traffic congestion relief, we have transformed many grade interchanges into grade separations and interchanges greatly increasing road capacity effectively and minimising delays. Most of these are the biggest and most unique ones in the world. The number of bridges constructed in Dubai have doubled during the last two years.

Highway capacity is defined to be the maximum number of vehicles passing over a given section of a lane or a road during a given period of time. It is normally given in units of vehicles or passenger cars per hour.

RTA is keen to increase the capacity of the Dubai road network to accommodate the huge increase in traffic volumes. Road capacity can be increased through widening and adding new lanes to the existing network and through increasing the operating speed by solving different intersection and bottleneck problems.

We continuously measure the level of service over each link in the Dubai road network and try to reserve an acceptable level of service over the links according to the international standard (Highway Capacity Manual 2000).

Through these procedures we can and are achieving our targets of relieving traffic congestions, minimising delay time and providing safe and smooth transport for all.

Which are the new areas/developments in Dubai that are being linked and will be linked in the near future with these new roads?

Currently Dubai’s economic development is sky rocketing, and through development of major new road projects, we are trying to keep up with Dubai’s growth and also help accelerate its growth through our initiatives.

Construction of new roads is happening all over Dubai, however, areas where new roads are being developed include: the area around the Arabian canal, the area around Mohamed Bin Rashid Park, the Dubai World Central, the Dubai Land area, the Business Bay and the Dubai Lagoons project.

Nabel Mohammed Saleh, Director of Roads, Roads and Traffic Agency (RTA )

What are the factors you consider when planning the infrastructure of such a fast developing city like Dubai?

Factors to be considered during the planning stage of infrastructure construction are: identifying the target design year based on which design will be carried out, identification of the nature of development around the infrastructure, identification of the land use of the development, anticipating the trip generation rates and the trips generated from the assigned development, perform a trip distribution process, perform traffic assignment and modal split task, perform the soil investigation analysis process and the infrastructure design steps.

By going through the above-mentioned steps, we can predict the number of anticipated users and hence be able to start planning the relevant infrastructure.

Typically, what is the time frame involved from the planning stage of the development of a new road complex to link a new part of town?

There are a number of stages. They are:

1) Strategic Planning Stage: The idea of constructing a new road has to be seen from the strategic planning point of view to predict the impact of the new road on the network.

2) Feasibility Study Stage: Before proceeding with any project, a feasibility study has to be performed on the project to provide an overall view about the benefit cost ratio to see whether the project is feasible or not.

3) Geometric Design Stage: At this stage, the idea of building a road is transformed into engineering drawings and material quantities and specifications of the project. This stage may involve the following steps: preliminary study which involves a traffic study and analysis about the volume of traffic expected on the road, the preliminary design which involves preparation of the preliminary project drawings and lastly the final design which is the preparation of the final project drawing.

4) Tendering Stage: The determination of the lowest bidder of the contract who will do the construction works of the project.

5) Road Construction Stage: The construction and supervision of the project to ensure that the project has been constructed according to the specifications and standards.

The time frame of these stages varies according to the importance and the size of the project.

How does this time frame differ from that of expansions of existing roads?

Developing/expanding an existing road may not take that long comparatively as some of the above-mentioned stages will not be present.

What are the challenges you face in planning and executing the construction of your road networks?

Our biggest challenges during the planning stage are predicting the traffic volumes that will be expected to use the road, anticipating trips generated due to the development of the area around the project, simulating the anticipated traffic movement over different interchanges to simulate the actual movement, overcoming different design restrictions to design a road that complies with the international standards within limited conditions and avoiding major expropriations of the existing plots needed for widening roads and constructing major interchanges.

The challenges we face while construction are: developing a traffic detour plan to divert traffic into alternative routes to avoid delaying road users during the construction stage; overcoming construction problems, choosing the most promising and optimum method statement for infrastructure construction and tallying the planned project schedule with the actual schedule to achieve the milestone project dates.

Which roads are being planned for the near future?

We are planning an extension of the Nad Al Hamar Road, parallel roads up to Jebel Ali -Lihbab Road, the Dubai Academic City Road, the Al Qoudra Road, the Bawady Boulevard, the Meydan Road and the Business Bay Road.

How is this planning of a new road network connected to the overall vision of Dubai’s expansion?

The idea of developing a new road is born from the overall vision of the proposed expansion of Dubai. The construction of a new road contributes significantly to the development of the area around the new road. So, the proposed planning is studied well first. The proposed new roads network will be studied accordingly to be complying with the nature and the size of expansion and development.

Moving on to traffic congestion, how do you plan to lessen the load of cars on Dubai roads?

In order to overcome congestion problems in Dubai, we have developed comprehensive execution plans. They are

1) Developing Dubai’s roads network, through: a) widening and developing the existing road network, b) extending and constructing new roads in different locations, c) ensure network connectivity, d) develop and upgrade different interchanges.

2) Develop public transportation modes, through: a) developing the metro project which can be considered to be the first rail transport project in the GCC. It will contribute significantly in solving traffic congestions, b) developing the modern bus transport and reserving a dedicated lane for buses, c) encouraging people to use different public transportation modes, d) developing modern and air conditioned bus shelters in different Dubai locations, e) extending the metro lines to cover origins and destinations of different trips.

3) Develop strategic operational Polices such as a) encourage car pooling, b) implementing toll roads system (SALIK), c) restricting issuance of new driving licenses, d) implementing some policies towards reducing car ownership percentages.